The move from projection and CRT TVs to LCD and plasma TVs saved home theater lovers lots of space in their homes and the thinner sets looked much more attractive as well. The next big change in HDTV sets will come in the form of OLED TVs.

Sony announced yesterday that it would sell the world’s first OLED TV in Japan with a screen size of 11-inches and a price tag of about $1,744 USD. Following Sony’s announcement, Toshiba President and CEO Atsutoshi Nishida announced today that Toshiba was going to have its own 30-inch OLED TV on the market by 2009.

Nishida is quoted by TechOn as saying Toshiba previously projected its OLED TVs to reach the market in “2015 to 2016.” Toshiba is also reportedly getting both high-end and commodity OLED TVs ready for consumers.

Part of the problem that makes OLED technology currently expensive and the lead-time for larger OLED TV screen sizes longer is the immaturity of the method for producing OLED panels. Current OLED panels are difficult to manufacture and degrade over time with a lifespan of only 30,000 hours according to PC World. The average LCD TV has a lifespan of around 50,000 hours.

The benefits of OLED technology in TVs are thinner screens and higher contrast ratios along with faster response times. OLED technology requires no backlighting, which allows for the much thinner cabinet sizes.

Agreed. The only real reason i can see that CRT's aren't still widely used is not because of image quality. They happen to have (imo) better image quality than anything else available. The only problem i see is that if ya want a 50" screen, the tube would just be gigantic. Thus to me SED is the most reasonable progression.

SED can't hold a candle to the advantadges OLED has in thinness and portability. I'm pretty sure they can't match the contrast ratio, response time and brightness either. Not to mention that OLED's will eventually get better economies of scale since they are "printable" and that they can also be manufactured on transparent and or flexible substrates.

SED is just a rehash of tube tech, it will probably work and look nice (and may have the advantage of no native resolution), but the market will prefer OLED, just like it prefers LCD over plasma. Especially since SED is way late to the game and is arguably way behind OLED in development and time to market

quote: I think OLED has a very strong possibility of disrupting SED and FED in future techs. Its cheaper, more mature and solves all of the problems of all displays right now (is flexible, faster response time, less power) except variable resolution. However, the variable resolution is becoming less and less of an issue because the resolution and DPI is increasing so fast.

Whatever happened to laser tv's? Mitsubishi was supposed to have one on the market by this holiday season and I haven't heard squat for about a year! They were supposed to be brighter, more colorful and have a higher contrast ratio than lcd's and plasma's and be comparable in price. It sounded like a no-brainer to me.

The laser TVs are still projection type displays, usually combined with a DLP chip.

The difference is that they use 3 color lasers for the light source instead of a bright lamp with a color-wheel.Some designs use 3 DLP chips instead of one, and optics to combine the final image; reducing flicker and color separation.

There are already a few models available on the market if I remember correctly.

But OLEDs, definitely seem like the future of current display technologies.